Mendoza
It’s been a few days since the last post. Tom’s mom has already written to us, worried that we hadn’t posted any blogs in the last few days – are we ok?. Certainly we have lots to write about. The reason is that we are exhausted. Here’s why…
We have moved south and are now making our home in Mendoza, Argentina.
Mendoza is a city of about 1M people – half in the city and half in the surrounding suburbs. It lies on the Argentine side of the Andes, on the flat plains – think of Calgary - with a magnificent view of the mountains to the west.
The weather is warm – it’s spring here and the sun beats down. It’s already about 80 degrees at noon. The peak of summer will be very hot, but we will be gone by then.
Mendoza’s streets are lined with trees that give a welcome shade, and also give the city a leafy, comfortable look. The wide sidewalks are tiled, and the polished woodwork on buildings gleams like jewelry. The air is clean and the cars are well-maintained.
Mendoza is the heart of the Argentine wine industry. It’s warm enough to grow grapes and olives, which are the main products in this region. Mendoza is also a great jumping-off point to go hiking in the mountains and there are thermal hot-springs nearby.
Although the city is quite compact, we have been walking for miles. We are staying with a family, about a 30 minute hike from the school. Since we are not expected back to the casa for lunch, we have gone exploring the centro after class - checking out the cafe’s and sights. The city has some spectacular architecture – old colonial buildings, art-deco wedding cakes, tiled parks with ornate fountains, you name it.
We were used to having a quiet lunch in Ecuador, but we always made a plan for the afternoon. So when we arrived here, we booked a few afternoon activities as well. The school offers a number of afternoon activities, and the city offers many more.
Mistake. Here, businesses open between 8:30 and 9:00 (our Spanish classes start at 8:30), and stay open until about 1:00 PM (when our classes end). Then everything closes, and people head home for a LONG siesta. Businesses reopen around 5:00 or 6:00 stays open until about 9:00. Then people head home for dinner. Then the night-life starts.
At 7:30 PM, the restaurants aren’t open – the chairs are upside-down on the tables. At 9:00, anyone you see in a restaurant is likely a tourist. The locals start to arrive around 10:00, often with small children. A proper time for adults to dine is 11:00 or later.
We didn’t know. We decided to take a Tango group-lesson, which started at 9:00. We thought that was unusually late, but figured the teachers had day jobs or the venue wasn’t available.
We had participated in a 2-hour wine-tasting class in the afternoon, and Michelle had booked a hairdresser for 5:00 (the earliest they would take her). And when we got home, we had homework to do. So we didn’t get a siesta before dinner.
We should have realized the situation when we had to beg our house-mother to serve us dinner early enough to race out to the class. Other students knew better – a 9:00 PM class is exactly the right time for students who want to learn BEFORE dinner.
The tango lesson was terrific - we’ll talk about tango in another posting. After the lesson, we stopped for a glass of wine in the Paseo Sarmiento, off the Plaza Independencia. It’s a big pedestrian street filled with cafe’s, bars, and restaurants. It was 11:00 PM on a Thursday night. There was live music, and the warm evening air was perfect.
Turned out the restaurant didn’t sell wine by the glass – the local custom is to order a bottle. So we got a delicious bottle of local Malbec (with a plate of local cheeses to accompany it). We settled back happily, wondering how we had ever found such a perfect place.
When we arrived, the cafe and surrounding ones were empty, and we thought they were close to closing. But as we sat and drank our wine, the seats around us started to fill up. Around 1:00, the street was rocking. But we were dead tired, we tipsily hailed a taxi home.
The next morning came too quickly for us. We struggled out of bed with our 6:30 alarm clock, but we were hung-over and ruined for the day (our professor took pity on us, spent two hours in simple conversation exercises, and didn’t assign any homework). We groaned that we had previously booked afternoon activities and had to stay awake until mid-afternoon - we hiked home afterwards and collapsed into bed. We had wanted to go to a dance club in the evening, but we just couldn’t do it.
Mendoza is a very safe and tranquil city. We are told that the only time we need to be careful is 6:00 AM on Saturday and Sunday, when the drunks are coming home.
We’re learning not to fill up the day – that afternoon siesta is critical. We’re also learning the practice of eating four times a day – breakfast at the casa, lunch at a restaurant (always a leisurely event, see below), coffee and a snack at 6:00, and dinner at 10:00 or so. (We call it the Argentine diet plan—not sure of the ultimate effect this will have on our waistlines.)
The locals also fuel their day with regular hits of excellent coffee, and mate – a tea with a mule’s kick of caffeine. We’re learning to do that too.
We are told that Buenos Aires isn’t like this. The siesta is shorter, and the workday ends earlier. Malena, our house mother, tells us that when she moved here from Buenos Aires, she was surprised that people here got into their pyjamas and settled in for a serious nap in the afternoon.
Mendoza is a lovely place. We’re going to park ourselves here longer that we had originally planned (we’re already talking about renting an apartment here for November). But until we get acclimatized to the local schedules, we may not get as many blogs posted as we were able to in Ecuador.